Just wanted to share my experience with this conversion for any others that may be considering it.
After much debate my wife and I decided to replace our failed cooling unit on our Dometic RM 7030 with JC Refrigertion’s HVAC conversion.
Although he did not have a specific video for this conversion, the regular cooling unit R&R video provided enough insight for me to take this on myself.
Also, JR provided me with a picture of the new connection points on the circuit board.
The unit cost $895 plus $175 for shipping $1,070 total. It came Friday and everything was in the box we needed except for the 3/8” brass plug for the gas main and some wire and connectors I needed to extend some of the leads including the main 110V plug. My son in law and a neihbor helped with the install. We started when I got home from work Friday at about 6pm and had the fridge back in by 10:30pm.
I let it sit upright overnight and the next morning finished the 12V connection to the circuit board as I had to extend it as well. When I first powered the unit up it went to AC power then went to fault. I then realized the fuse popped on the board and I had forgotten to put the fuse in JC Refrigeration had sent. Put the fuse in and powered it off and back on and it fired right up!
Within two hours it was cold enough to switch food over. As of this morning fridge is super cold and freezer is functioning perfect.
Tips if you decide to do this yourself:
1. Have at least two helpers
2. Have 12awg wire in black, white, red and green.
3. Keep your terminal ends from the gas leads going to circuit board, they are angled to fit under the board cover.
4. Purchase the good heat shrinking internal solder butt connectors...made for great connections.
5. Purchase gas main plug. Mine was a 3/8” male.
6. Put visquine down in coach foam manages to find its way to the floor and furnature.
7. Dry fit the new unit and trim foam until it fits perfectly then foam it in.
8. After foaming unit in, screwing it down and taping it off. Stand the unit up and screw in cooling fins while foam is still wet...made it easy to get good contact between plates and thermo-mastic caulk.
9. Install the fridge and let it set for as many hours installed as you had it on its side so the compressor oil has time to find its way back down to the compressor.
10. Install the new fuse in the circuit board!!!
11. Once it starts up make sure the cooling fan is running.
12. There was no instruction as to where to mount the circuit board to the new cooling unit so I just put it where it made most sense for future service and access.
All in all I thought this swap was relatively easy as long as you are handy and have a basic understanding of AC & DC electric.
We are extremely happy with our decision and would recommend this to anyone who wants to keep their RV fridge but have the benefits of a residential fridge.
As to power consumption, I put my amp meter on the compressor lead and it was drawing 1.0-1.1 amps under what I would say is its heaviest load trying to do the initial cool down. I did switch the refrigerator circuit in the breaker box to the side of the panel that is powered by our inverter. By my calculations with our current battery/inverter (4ea 225ah lead acid/ 2500watt inverter) set up I could run the fridge a week before having to re-charge the batteries if we are boondocking. I assume with other loads that will be more like every 3 days. Once we install solar this should be a non-issue.
Sorry I didn’t take more pics but things were moving kind of fast!